Joanna Morland: 'Preface'
In: A Quality of Light: a collaborative visual arts event. Penzance: St. Ives International, 1997, pp. 11-12
A Quality of Light is an international visual arts event. It features fourteen artists from the UK and abroad, who have been invited to exhibit in and produce new work specifically for a variety of locations in Newlyn, St Ives and other sites in West Cornwall.
This area has a long association with art and artists, from the Newlyn School of the late 19th century to the heyday of the St Ives School in the post-war period, and the current generation of artists active throughout the region. They have had many different reasons for living and working in West Cornwall, but most have in some way or other fallen under the spell of its distinctive quality of light. This quality is both powerful and elusive; it is subject to a wide range of responses and interpretations - and for this reason it seemed both a good starting-point and a stimulating shared theme for a project of this kind.
A Quality of Light is the first project of St Ives International, a new charitable company established to devise and co-ordinate collaborative arts initiatives in Cornwall. The partner organizations involved are Falmouth College of Arts, the Institute of International Visual Arts, Newlyn Art Gallery, South West Arts and Tate Gallery St Ives.
The original impetus came from a discussion between Falmouth College of Arts and Tate Gallery St Ives which focused on the tendency to look back at the region's artistic history - particularly on St Ives's 'golden age' of British modernism - rather than towards new possibilities, including the work of the contemporary art practitioners in the locality.
After South West Arts became involved, the idea was expanded into a programme of site-specific works and associated events, and a feasibility study was undertaken by Garry and Naomi Fabian Miller. The theme 'A Quality of Light' was developed at this point. Newlyn Art Gallery and the Institute of International Visual Arts were invited to join the collaboration, and the process of selecting artists began.
The artists invited to take part in A Quality of Light were selected by a curatorial group comprising Emily Nash, Newlyn Art Gallery; Michael Tooby, Tate Gallery St Ives; David Chandler, Institute of International Visual Arts; and Garry Fabian Miller, who had been retained as a curatorial animateur by St Ives International. Each member of the group suggested artists who, they felt, had demonstrated a potential interest in the theme of light in their earlier work, and who might be likely to respond to it with originality and sensitivity. The final selection has created an exciting and challenging programme including artists with a variety of cultural backgrounds and artistic approaches, and using a range of media.
The development of the artists' projects is documented in a special exhibition, A Quality of Light - The Introduction, in the lower gallery at Newlyn Art Gallery. In addition to drawings, maquettes and other preparatory work by the fourteen participating artists, it includes a proposal by Chris Bucklow for future realization in the region.